This story aired on the July 27, 2023 episode of Crosscurrents.
In the third installment of the series, 'In Harm's Way: Workers Battle the Overdose Crisis', we take a look at the national staffing crisis among substance use disorder counsellors across the state, and spend time with a supervisor who started out as a group counsellor making $19 dollars an hour.
For a war on drugs that has proven to have not worked, that funding could very well have been used to pay counsellors more, which would get more counsellors
This story was edited by Lisa Morehouse and engineered by Galnadgee Joe-Johnson and this series is supported by the 2023 Center for Health Journalism California Health Equity Fellowship.
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